Tehran Condemns WSJ Op-Ed Advising Biden on Striking Iranian Nuclear Facilities

The American media outlet alleged that talks on the restoration of the Iran nuclear deal will eventually fail and that Biden will be stuck with the choice of either allowing Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons or to attack it pre-emptively. Iran has repeatedly dismissed allegations that it seeks to build nukes.

Iran's permanent mission to the UN has harshly condemned a recent opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, which advises Biden on landing strikes against the Islamic Republic's nuclear objects.

"Encouraging and advising leaders to opt for war especially when a serious diplomatic process is underway is ignorant, hostile, and in contravention of the principles of international law", Iran's diplomatic mission said via its Twitter.

The diplomatic mission slammed the article as reckless and noted that those who wrote and published it will bear full responsibility for the consequences it causes.

The WSJ's op-ed titled "Biden’s Moment of Truth in Iran" and penned by Mark Dubowitz and Matthew Kroenig suggests that ongoing talks in Vienna, directed at restoring the Iran nuclear deal after it was decimated by Washington's unilateral exit from it in 2018, will ultimately fail. The article then claims that US President Joe Biden will face a "fateful choice": either allow Iran to have nuclear weapons or strike the nation's nuclear objects.

"The red line for military action will come when Iran's timeline to sprint to a nuclear weapon shrinks to less than the Pentagon's response time. On the current trajectory, that could happen early this year. If and when it does, the president should order military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent Tehran from building the bomb", the article said.

The newspaper's article goes on to suggest that precision strikes will set Iran's nuclear programme back years and might convince Tehran to abandon the idea for good out of sheer fear of further financial losses. The authors claim that US military might should suffice to destroy even nuclear objects buried deep underground. At the same time, the article did not pay any attention to the possible radioactive poisoning that might stem from the destruction of operating nuclear centrifuges.

Tehran has repeatedly stressed that its nuclear programme is peaceful, and that the idea of building and using nuclear weapons contradicts Islam – the state religion. In 2015, Iran struck a deal with the EU, Germany, France, the UK, US, Russia, and China to limit its nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting sanctions. After the US ditched the deal in 2018 (under President Trump) and re-imposed sanctions, Tehran started to scale back its compliance with the accord.

Right now, Tehran, the remaining parties to the nuclear deal, and the Biden administration are negotiating in Vienna to revive the accrod. However, progress has been slow. The Europeans have reportedly accused Iran of making impossible demands, such as giving guarantees that no party to the deal will withdraw from it as the US did almost four years ago.